Warren William Autographed Photo Sells on eBay for $109.71

Unfortunately I didn’t have much extra money this last week, though I would have tried to steal it for $50 if the bidding had stayed that low. Anyway, eBay seller grapefruitmoongallery sold the beautiful 8×10 photo below on eBay for $109.71 last Wednesday night (February 20, 2008). It’s signed by Warren William and dated December 13, 1941. The seller mentions that it’s addressed to a Marion, but to be honest it looks like the commonly used Sincerely above his name. I sell a lot of collectibles, but I don’t do autographs (too risky!), so I was looking forward to seeing what this would go for…now we know.

(Click the thumbnail to enlarge)

I’ll post if any others crop up, hopefully I’ll eventually own one!

Update: April 1, 2008
Here’s a small 4.5″ X 6″ page from an autograph book sold on March 14, 2008 by eBay seller nu4uold2me123 for $47.67 plus shipping:

Wow, that makes the photo look like a bargain I think. I would have gone $25 on this myself, but I am a notoriously cheap buyer.

By the way, now that we’ve got two different signatures on this post the first thing that I notice is that they look quite different. This isn’t mean to cast aspersions on either signature, it’s just something that bears watching with future posts.

Update: July 6, 2008

Very happy as I finally won a Warren William signature.  As always I want to state I’m no autograph expert, so I have no idea if this is the real McCoy or not (though I did purchase through a seller I’ve used before and trust), but I’m happy with it.  The size wasn’t stated, I’m operating on the assumption that it’s mall though, just a cut, but perhaps I can put together a display with one of the photos I have.  I purchased from seller thephotoarchive for $24.38 plus $2.50 shipping on the evening of July 6.  Here’s an image:

Again, I don’t think it perfectly matches the others shown above, and my own opinion is close to worthless on this, but I do feel better about seeing a little bit of a pattern in the W’s.  I am personally very leery of quite nearly the entire autograph industry, but I also think it would be strange to sit around forging Warren William signatures.  My guess remains that at worst all of the signatures on this page are at least vintage, likely signed by William, but then again, who knows, maybe his wife or an employee did his signing.  But I’m perfectly happy accepting this into my own collection as a Warren William signature.

I’ll keep tracking and posting these in the future so we can continue to compare.